A couple stories from this week...
We were trying to follow-up on some PIs one day when we ran into a few people from Vietnam! They spoke very little Japanese, but we managed to communicate. Apparently there are 12 of them that work together and live in nearby apartments in Yokote. We have like 5 PIs in that neighborhood, and it's where the branch mission leader and his wife live too, so it's perfect. We ordered some Vietnamese Book of Mormons and gave 2 of them out yesterday. We have an app called Drill that we use for language study, it has key sentences for each principle in PMG. I downloaded Vietnamese in Drill and we taught them a lesson by just playing the audio for different key sentences, awesome right? Sometimes God gives you the gift of tongues, sometimes He gives you an iPad.
We had a few great lessons with K--he has been just eating up the Book of Mormon and understands it so well. He compared Nephi and Laban to him and his boss--he said his boss is pretty lazy and doesn't like to help the people under him. K told us jokingly that he would totally be willing to chop off his head if God told him to. Haha. At least, we assumed he was joking.
He has been understanding the doctrine so well, the trouble right now is helping him to see that it applies to his life individually. We've been working through some basic commitments though and he has been making huge progress. He wasn't sure at first if he was ready to try praying or not, but the spirit convinced him to. He took a few minutes until he had thought of a few things to say in his prayer, then gave a beautiful, sincere, prayer. We visited him on Saturday and invited him to church. Usually he parties super late on Saturday nights, so we were thinking that would be the main obstacle, but as we talked with him, it came out that he actually just hates crowded places (which was funny because we started sacrament meeting with only 4 people, including us). He told us that he doesn't even go to movies or baseball games or anything like that because too many people are gathered in one place. He said between that and the fact that he doesn't like singing, he didn't really want
to come to church. It was so interesting because he is a super chill, fun, laid-back 29 year-old who is still 22 on the inside, and we would never have guessed that crowded places were not his forte. But I guess it just goes to show that you can never really assume what investigators' concerns are/will be. We offered to give him a tour of the building as a nice middle ground, and he accepted our offer. We walked around with just the 3 of us and sang some hymns and did a lesson in the church. He was bouncing around the idea of coming next week, so I think it's just a matter of time at this point.
We did a lesson with our Chinese investigator, I Shimai, and 2 Sisters from the branch taught with us, which was great. By the end it turned into some solid Sister-Sister bonding, which I think was more important than anything we could have taught.
On Sunday night, we were biking along and I saw this light on at a 2nd story apartment. I felt like we needed to stop by, so we parked our bikes, rang their doorbell and met a guy who was shirtless and only opened his door a tiny crack. He was willing to listen, so we talked with him for a while, but he wasn't interested and wouldn't take any chirashi or anything. That was disappointing, especially since I thought that it was a spiritual impression to knock on that door, and I felt like we had just wasted 15 minutes of our precious Sunday evening proselyting time. But, as we were walking out to our bikes, someone pulled up in his car to the same apartment building. We said hi as he was walking from his car to his apartment, and he was really friendly. We found out his name is R and he is 25, we became friends right away. It was Easter, so we shared an Easter video with him and asked him what he thought about Jesus Christ. He didn't know anything about Christ, he didn't even know it was Easter. We testified that we can find true happiness and peace through Jesus Christ, and he said his life is already fine. But we told him that even if he's already happy, he can find even more happiness--true joy. His life might be a piece of cake right now, but the gospel can be like frosting on the cake. I'm not totally sure if he was pricked in his heart or if he just thought we were funny, but he agreed to let us come by and share our message with him!
This was the first week of the new transfer so our district has changed--my new district leader is Elder Mimaki, we are good buds from Aomori! We were in the same apartment for a transfer, it was way good to see him again. In our district, there are now 3 Elders who are fluent in Japanese. Two are Nihonjin and one is a Brazilian but he grew up in Japan. Then there are 3 American Elders and 2 American Sisters. Our district is so solid! We are expecting some sweet miracles this transfer.
Love you so much Momma!! Thanks for everything you do!!!
XOXOXoxooxoxXOXOXOXoxoxoxXOXOx
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett
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| Us with our new homies from Vietnam! |
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